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ITV Southern (based on Dan Evans' vision)
This article is based on Dan Evan's Southern gallery on the APFS website. ITV Southern (previously Southern Television) is the holder of the ITV franchise for the South and Southeast of England The station was launched on 30 August 1958, and is owned and operated by ITV plc, under the licensee of ITV Broadcasting Limited. Southern Television Ltd. was one of several (but not all) ITV plc-owned regional companies to have its legal name changed on 29 December 2006, when it became ITV Southern Ltd. This company is, along with most other regional companies owned by ITV plc, listed on www.companieshouse.gov.uk as a "Dormant company". The company broadcasts to the region from the Hannington, Midhurst, Rowridge, Whitehawk Hill, Hastings, Heathfield, Tunbridge Wells, Bluebell Hill and Dover transmitters. The station also supplies its regional news service to viewers served by the Oxford transmitting station in the neighbouring ITV Central region. Includes map of coverage area and transmitter groups included. Southern operates from studios in Whiteley, Hampshire, producing regional news and current affairs programmes in addition to occasional networked productions for the ITV network. History Launch When the Independent Television Authority (ITA) advertised for applicants to run the south of England station in 1958, Southern Television beat eight other applicants for the contract. Its initial shareholders were Associated Newspapers, the Rank Organisation and the Amalgamated Press, each holding one third of the company. Associated Newspapers was allowed to remain a shareholder in Southern only on the condition that it sold its remaining 10% stake in Associated-Rediffusion to avoid owning parts of two ITV companies. The Amalgamated Press dropped out of the consortium before the station went on air. This led to Associated Newspapers and Rank increasing their stakes to 37.5% each, and D. C. Thomson & Co. Ltd taking the remaining 25%. Southern went on air on Saturday, 30 August 1958 at 5.30pm with the first playing of Southern Rhapsody, the station theme which was used to begin each day's transmission up until 31 December 1981, written by composer Richard Addinsell and performed by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra with Addinsell conducting. The first presenter on air was continuity announcer Meryl O'Keefe (later to become a BBC announcer); her first on-air announcement was followed by an outside broadcast link-up fronted by Julian Pettifer (later an award-winning war correspondent) and a regional news bulletin read by Martin Muncaster. Other opening night programmes included a Filmed Playhouse drama entitled The Last Reunion, a preview programme called Coming Shortly, an episode of the American crime drama Highway Patrol and most notably, a networked opening night programme entitled Southern Rhapsody, starring Gracie Fields and the Lionel Blair Dancers, televised from the station's studios in a converted cinema in the Northam area of Southampton and the ocean liner Caronia which was berthed in Southampton docks. 1981-1992 The 1980 franchise round required Southern to re-apply to the IBA to continue to serve the South from 1982. Competition was stiff, but Southern won the franchise round in a close contest against TVS and six other contenders since their plans for a better mix of programmes and greater investment were considered good enough to operate the franchise alone. After that Southern made an arrangement to cover two Glyndebourne operas each year; with the advent of Channel 4 launched in November 1982, the operas were shown on Channel 4. Houseparty was replaced by Not For Women Only which recognised changes in women's social patterns, while a new Saturday morning children's series No. 73 was also introduced, locally at first, before being networked. Whitbread acquired a 20% stake in Southern from European ferries in April 1984, as the latter wished to concentrate its financial and management resources on the shipping and property sectors, but sold on the stake in November 1986. Lionel Ross financial director stated "We think that Southern Television remains a very good company but we carried out a review of our investments and decided to concentrate our energies elsewhere". In August 1984, Greg Dyke became Southern Director of Programmes. He was brought in to rejuvenate the station, and started to move programming away from its original philosophy of niche arts and science programming, and began producing more entertainment programmes. In 1985 an agreement was reached with LWT, who required help to fill its schedules with appropriate, domestically-produced programming while not having to increase its budget. Thus Southern was able to get more of its programmes onto the ITV network slots, such as Bobby Davro on the Box, Catchphrase, C.A.T.S Eyes, Five Alive, Kelly's Eye, The Ruth Rendell Mysteries, Summertime Special and other light entertainment programmes. Southern retained its original philosophy for regional and children's programmes. By November 1986, the station became one of the most heavily criticised companies by the IBA over its programming. The criticisism mainly concerned the Southampton editions of Day By Day while issues were raised over the quality of Southern's drama and light entertainment output. Its education shows were 'too didactic' while its religious output was branded as having 'barely discernible religious content'. Dyke accepted the IBA criticism, but highlighted that Southern had already begun remeding the issues and faults, with a new editor for its Southampton news operation, and a new head of religious output was brought in, along with a controller of drama, a first for Southern. Once again, Southern expressed their concern about its relationship with the Big Five ITV stations, and how they controlled the channel's output. In April 1987, Greg Dyke left Southern and returned to LWT. By Southern's twenty-ninth Birthday in 1987, its profits had grown 62% since 1958 to £14.4million, which was helped after Southern increased its share of programming for ITV network and growth in new business; warnings were made that inflation and cost was higher, but projected growth television operations would be around 7–8% during the rest of 1987. The end result was that the accounts revealed Southern had become bigger than Yorkshire Television in terms of advertising revenue, and was quickly catching up with the other Big Five ITV companies. By the following January, its profits had increased again to £21.8M. There was speculation at the time, that the technicians strike at TV-am could have spread to its operations over its plans to provide an overnight service which become fully operational by June 1988. With Southern's continuing to generate large profits, but restricted in ITV network programming, the company started to search for other investments. In 1985 it launched failed bids to acquire the French TV channel TF1 and Thorn EMI Screen entertainment. In 1986 Southern was successful in buying Midem, an organisation that promoted trade fairs, and Gilson International a Los Angeles distribution company selling programmes outside the US. Southern also acquired a 3.5% stake in Australia Network Ten company Northern Star. At the start of July 1988, speculation started to appear of a take-over bid for the American media company MTM Enterprises. By 7 July 1988, MTM was brought for £190M, which give Mary Tyler Moore 5.1% and Arthur Price, chief executive of MTM, 6.6% shares in Southern. Both agreed not to sell for a period of five years. Southern paid for the deal partly by selling 10% stakes in Southern for £29.2M each to Canal Plus and Generle D'Images, a cable television, film library and film production group, asking shareholders for £47.8M though a convertible preference share issue, with the remaining £38m taken out in a bank loan. The deal created a unique company with productions operations in Eire, UK and USA, along with a UK broadcasting franchise. Uncertainty over the high price paid by Southern for MTM coupled with a collapse of a US syndication market, which affected many other US stations plus a £5.7M write-off, from the disposal of Super Channel resulted in financial instability. In January 1990, the company started searching for a buyer for a 49% stake in MTM, as part restructuring of MTM due to losses of £7.3M. A few days later, Southern confirmed profits were down 35% in 1989, which resulted in 140 UK redundancies. This was not as bad as expected since Southern has planned to eliminate 200 jobs during the summer of 1989. Ahead of the ITV franchise round, James Gatward resigned from Southern, after being informed his services were no longer required, as the board believed Gatward was not showing sufficient resolve in preparing Southern for the franchise bid. Further changes took place, with the Southern Television board being merged into the Southern Entertainment board, along with a further 100 redundancies to help strengthen the finances. In March 1991, four contenders were lined up to buy MTM, which would have seen the company being sold off around £50M, there were hopes the deal would be sorted by May before the ITV franchise appliction was submitted. In 1990 a new Broadcasting Act was passed by Parliament, which deregulated broadcasting in the UK and removed the monopoly on programme production held by franchise holders. Changes to network broadcasting and the introduction of cable and satellite channels meant that ITV needed to be leaner and fitter to compete with its new rivals. The original draft of the Broadcasting Act stated that the applicant with the highest cash bid would win; however following fears that this would financially stretch the network and diminish programme standards the concept of a 'quality threshold' was introduced. Incumbents and applicants had to pass this first before cash bids were even considered; even then if a cash bid was deemed to impact on plans the application could be rejected. Southern passed the quality threshold – indeed, as the incumbent broadcaster it could hardly have failed to do as failure would have called the ITC's own regulatory regime into question. The lucrative nature of the Southern contract area made it one of the most desirable franchises in the UK. Despite preparing vast amounts of audience research, programming proposals and an extremely comprehensive application document for the ITC, the Southern board – now minus its founder James Gatward – calculated that it needed to outbid all opposition to retain its licence. This resulted in the "bid high or die" strategy – in which the management calculated the highest possible bid that Southern could possibly afford. The result of these calculations was a massive £59 million per annum payable for the next ten years. It was the highest bid ever made by any UK television broadcaster. The ITC announced the results of the franchise battle by releasing simultaneous faxes to the contending companies. Two companies had passed the so-called programme "quality threshold" – Southern and Meridian Broadcasting. Of these two Southern's bid was the higher – and therefore was automatically have been awarded the licence for the South and South East of England. However the ITC asserted that there was now a third criterion, a requirement that the ITC could confidently expect the winning company to sustain its annual payments throughout the entire period of the 10-year licence. The ITC used this to foot-fault Meridian and claimed that they disqualified Meridian Broadcasting on unsatisfactory grounds of quality. The ITC then reawarded the licence to Southern Television. 1993-2002 In July 1993, Southern joined up with HTV, Westcountry, Channel Television and S4C to form a joint advertising company operated by Southern and HTV. Shortly after, Southern began to expand by buying Anglia Television, the ITV franchise for the east of England, in 1994. The following year, Southern became a major shareholder in the consortium that won the franchise for Channel 5. In 1996, Southern merged with United Newspapers (via an agreed takeover by United) to form United News & Media (UNM). The resulting company owned the Daily Express newspaper, Southern, Anglia, and a large shareholding (through the Yorkshire Post) in Yorkshire Tyne Tees Television, the owners of Yorkshire Television and Tyne Tees Television. The stake in Yorkshire Tyne Tees Television was sold to Granada, allowing them to take control of the two franchises in 1997. United News & Media later agreed to buy Scottish Television's 20% stake in HTV and on 28 June 1997, HTV was taken over fully by UNM for £370 million. In 1999, plans emerged of a merger between UNM and rival Carlton, however these talks failed when it appeared that Southern would have to be sold off as a condition of the deal. As a result, the television assets of UNM were sold to Granada, however due to regulations stating that the company could not control that large an audience share, the broadcasting arm of HTV was sold to Carlton in exchange for Central's 20% stake in Southern. ITV Southern today: 2002-present In 2002, Granada and Carlton decided to consolidate the separate brandings for the ITV franchises that they controlled, changing the name of the region to ITV Southern, with the on screen name of ITV1 used before all non-regional programming. The consolidation became further pronounced when Carlton and Granada merged to form ITV plc in 2004. 2004 also saw the move of ITV Southern from their previous Northam studio complex to a new studio base in Whiteley, Hampshire. In the subsequent years, ITV Southern's workforce has been condensed slowly with its operations considerably downgraded. This came to a head when Michael Grade announced his intention to reduce the number of regional programmes from 17 to nine. As part of these plans, which were approved by Ofcom in 2008, the three editions of the news programme Day By Day were replaced with a single edition with a pre-recorded opt out for either the South or South East of the region. The plans resulted in over half of Southern's existing staff being made redundant; all employees wishing to remain with the company were obliged to re-apply for jobs. Some staff opted for voluntary redundancy and many others have been left without jobs. Strike action was threatened as a result of the announcement. Studios Southampton The station's original studios were a converted cinema in Northam, Southampton. With the advent of colour in 1969, the company moved to purpose-built new studios next door to the existing site, built on land reclaimed from the River Itchen. Southern Television relocated to a much smaller office building in Whiteley in 2004 and the site at Northam was sold to developers. In 2010 the studio complex was demolished. Dover The company also ran production offices and a studio in Dover, to serve the eastern part of its region. The studios were opened in 1961, after the ITA's VHF Dover television transmitter went into operation the year before. The studios on Russell Street were mainly used for regional news production although some non-news programmes including the long-running rural affairs series Farm Progress, feature series and documentaries such as Guideline, Elusive Butterflies & Dougalling and the nightly Epilogue were also produced from Dover. During the Dover studio's time in existence, the company strived to produce dedicated opt outs for the East of the region – the first British television service of its kind. Southern's South East news team in Dover produced separate bulletins for the area as an opt-out into the Day by Day programme each weeknight. A dedicated South East bulletin was also broadcast after News at Ten. More well known to South East viewers was Scene South East, a weekly magazine programme introduced on 9 October 1964 as Friday on Ten, which replaced Day by Day on Friday nights. Its popularity led to the introduction of a shorter Scene Midweek programme on Wednesdays. Local commercials specific to the region were also broadcast to the Dover transmitter only, via the presentation control area at the Southampton studios. Dover-based presenters and reporters included Mike Field, Jeff Thomas, Malcolm Mitchell, Tim Brinton, Simon Theobalds, Arnie Wilson, Jill Cochrane, Derek Williamson, Pat Sloman, David Haigh (editor of Scene South East), Donald Dougall and Mike Fuller. The Dover studio directors were David Pick and Maurice Harper. The floor manager was John Heather and the production secretaries were Gwenneth Hughes and Denise Hood. Once Southern's studios in Maidstone were opened, the Dover studios were closed in 1983 and demolished a year later. The site is now a car park. Other facilities Unique in ITV and reflecting the area's maritime history the company converted a Second World War motor torpedo boat into a floating outside broadcasting unit named Southerner. The company had sales offices at Stag Place, London and Oxford Street, Manchester. There are also regional offices in Maidstone, Dorchester, Brighton and Reading. Identity Southern's logo is sometimes said to be a compass, what with the directional station name and the fact that the bottom point on the logo is longest – thereby suggesting a compass pointing south, in the direction of Southern TV's service area. However, the general consensus is that it is a star, named after the Southern Star and because Southern's final transmission showed the logo zooming off into the night sky. For the purposes of this article, the logo will be referred to as a star, to reflect what it is most popularly called. Southern's first identity featured an art deco style star which zoomed into screen before the bottom point extended downwards. The colour scheme of varying tones of grey, black and white. This was replaced in the early 1960s with a white rotating star against a black background against a drumroll jingle. This was again altered in the mid-1960s to the familiar star shape against a black background and accompanied by a jingle featuring a cacophony of noises. This shape formed from a circle, with the diagonal lines moving out and joining the circle and the horizontal and vertical lines being drawn last, with the name added last. This ident remained with the station until the end of its existence with some modifications, firstly the jingle was altered to nine notes on a guitar a few years later, and then the background was changed to blue in 1969 with the introduction of colour. This ident, occasionally supplemented by a subsequent caption stating 'The Station that serves the South', lasted until the company introduced a new look in 1982. After retaining their franchise in 1982, Southern introduced a new look resembling the 1960s colour logo. The star was redesigned somewhat and the station's name now zoomed in. The guitar jingle remained as it was. The ident was redesigned dramatically as Southern's first CGI ident was introduced in 1987 with the star logo and the company's name now silver and taking place on a dark blue gradient background. The guitar jingle was remixed with pianos and strings. This change, in effect, brought a more "corporate" feel to Southern Television. On 1st September 1989, Southern adopted the first ITV generic look and retained it until 1992, with the bottom half of the compass logo in their segment of the corporate ITV logo. The 1987 ident returned during 1991/1992 to introduce local programming. In 1992, Southern Television created a new ident featuring a blue Southern logo sliding in and a blue granite background (along with the company's name) unraveling from the left. The ITV logo was incorporated into this ident. Therefore, the 1989 jingle was kept in place. In 1997, the ITV logo was removed from Southern's ident, the station name was moved to the middle and a URL, www.southerntv.co.uk, was added. By this time, the jingle changed back into a version of the 1970s guitar jingle. Starting on 8th November 1999, as a result of the introduction of ITV's second generic ident package, the emphasis was on network's hearts logo with a very small Southern compass logo only featuring at the end of the formup. This look was in use until October 2002 when ITV1 in England and Wales abandoned local continuity and idents. The only exception were ITV1 idents featuring the word "Southern" below the ITV1 logo, shown before regional programming. However, even this did not last, and only a few years later these regional idents were dropped. Southern for a while managed to still retain some identity, by featuring their compass/star logo on the local weather forecast. However the logo was completely removed in 2004, last seen at the start of the late-night weather forecast on 5 December 2004. On 1 February 2005 it was replaced with a generic "ITV Southern" logo, the official name of the franchise. Since 2006, all idents have been generic to the entire network with no difference between regions and only the ITV1 name being used. On 14 January 2013, the station's on-air identity was changed to ITV, along with all other ITV plc-owned franchises. From September 2014 however Southern's identity was revived by an announcement (including the sub-region) immediately prior to the evening edition of ITV News Day By Day. Category:ITV logos Category:ITV Category:ABC Family Worldwide Category:United News and Media Category:Granada Category:ITV plc